Magical Cities, a Studio Esoterico Cornelio website

Every city has an official history, written in archives and in stone, and a whispered history, made of legends, popular names and stories handed down from generation to generation. «Magical Cities» was created to tell both, without confusing them. It is curated by the Studio Esoterico Cornelio, present online since 2014 and devoted to esotericism and the esoteric tradition, which alongside its official website has built a network of projects on history, symbols and traditions.

The esoteric tradition has a geography

European esotericism is not a set of abstract ideas: it was born and grew up in specific places. The Florence of Marsilio Ficino, where the Corpus Hermeticum was translated into Latin; the Prague of Rudolf II, where astronomers and alchemists met; the Naples of Raimondo di Sangro; the Toledo of the translators, through which Arabic science and magic passed into the Latin West. Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535), too, the author of De occulta philosophia to whom the Studio's name refers as a cultural reference, led a wandering life across Germany, France, Italy and the Low Countries, and taught at Pavia among other places.

That is why the Studio wanted a site that would follow the esoteric tradition on the map, from the squares of Turin to the stone circles of Stonehenge, from the mithraea of Rome to the sacred caves of the Gargano and Normandy.

Records, modern traditions, legends

Many esoteric places are surrounded by stories that tourist guides repeat without checking them. The site's articles try to reconstruct three levels for each place: what emerges from documents, excavations and contemporary sources; what has been added in recent times, such as Turin's magic triangles or the treasure of Rennes-le-Château; and what belongs to popular legend, such as Virgil holding up Castel dell'Ovo with an egg or the walnut tree of the Benevento witches. All three levels have value, but for different reasons, and readers have the right always to know which one they are in.

The articles contain no practical ritual instructions and do not attribute powers or energies to places: they describe architecture, works of art, people and stories. When a place can be visited, the text recalls its historical and artistic context, leaving readers the pleasure of discovery.

The official website

The name and trademark of the Studio Esoterico Cornelio are registered, and the starting point for getting to know it is its official website, studioesotericocornelio.com, from which the other sites in the network can also be reached. Anyone who is planning a journey, or simply wants to look with new eyes at a square they cross every day, can keep reading here.